Is it an insult to say that it's documented ISO

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems

Is it an insult to say that it's documented?

Guest was LJ Nichols

Related Podcast: Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Lindsay Jackson Nichols discussed the business benefits of ISO Certification and how it can be used in conjunction with continuous improvement. Lindsay is the CEO of MOCG, a management consulting firm specializing in implementing process improvement and ISO based management systems.

At MOCG, they help avoid ISO implementation problems and frustrations through their unique ISO Business System Evaluation and step by step ISO process improvement methodology. As a natural by-product of the system they put in place, you will get your ISO certification. They look for productivity improvement potential throughout the ISO process and use ISO as the frame work, rather than just meeting the minimum requirements of the ISO standards.

MOCG has developed a Free ISO Advisory Report called “The 10 Biggest Mistakes When Implementing an ISO Quality System and How To Over Come Them All�. This ISO report will educate you on what a quality system is supposed to do for your company, approaches to avoid and how to optimize your results.

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of the Business901 podcast.

With me today is Lindsay Jackson Nichols the CEO of MOCG, a management consulting firm specializing in implementing process improvement and ISO-based management systems.

Lindsay has perfected an approach to documenting organizations processes and tying them to their business metrics, making the ISO initiative a compelling value proposition. Lindsay, you make ISO sound like a marketing opportunity. Is it?

Lindsay Jackson Nichols: I think it is. I really do believe it is. I do. Many companies will contact me and it's pretty obvious from when I ask them why, what's the motivation for doing it? I'm going to get two very distinct responses: "We have to do it because our customers want us to" or "Our competitors are all registered and so we can't be seen to be falling behind." Or they say "We want to use it as an opportunity to improve what we do."

Typically, it's the latter that I am working with.

Joe: I always look at ISO as more of a standard than a quality initiative. Can you kind of define the two and maybe explain that to me?

Lindsay: It is a standard. Sure enough, for anyone that is unfamiliar with ISO 9001 it kind of predates all the way back to its origin, the second World War, where the organizations wanted to make sure that the ammunitions and the planes and everything else that they were procuring were going to meet standards so that they could be depended upon to do whatever it was that they were supposed to do, meeting specifications. These quality standards were born which set a standard playing field.

Whether you're a small organization in Barcelona, Spain or you're a service company in Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Minneapolis, Minnesota there is a common expectation that you have set protocols and procedures in place.

As a customer to either of those organizations this company controls the way they procure products and materials. They have inspection. They can verify what it is that they do and what their vendors are doing so that their finished product meets their customer's expectations. So that is essentially the definition of the quality standard.

Now whether it's an opportunity for an improvement, that's where the kind of a bone of contention comes into it. There are many organizations that say it really isn't. It's a standard that ultimately the finished product doesn't necessarily mean it's a better one than in an organization that isn't ISO registered.

I suppose you could say there that it's up to the organization to challenge themselves. Are they looking to meet a minimum standard, or are they looking to say "While we look internally at what we do, do we want to say "Where are our gaps? Where is it that we could be doing better? Where is the interruption in the flow of data and information between departments and people? Where are there overlaps, where we've got multiple people thinking that they should be doing things and that needs to be more clearly defined."

Joe: When I think of continuous improvement I always think of Lean or the Six Sigma or maybe some other quality initiatives, I guess which ISO would fall under. But you're saying that ISO should be an active tool that is really the basis of your continuous improvement?

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Lindsay: Yes, I think so. You bring up Lean as an example and the Six Sigma. I think an organization that is thinking about implementing either of those initiatives is motivated by the desire to raise the bar on itself, to look for opportunities to improve internally. They're not necessarily saying "What do our customers want? Why are we doing it?" I think this is where you've got these two schools of thinking. A company that's thinking about doing ISO 9000, generally speaking, is being motivated externally because they've got organizations that say "You know what? We don't really have an appetite for change. We just want that certificate. We want that certificate so that we can show our customers we are equally as good as our competitors."

I think this is where the distinction is rather than saying "Forget it; it's not that customers aren't important. But forget about what the external influences are what do we want to do internally as the owner of an organization, as the leader of an organization?

What is it that I want to impress upon my people for them to look at what they do and look for opportunities to do it better, to cross the functional lines and work together more completely?" And again, lots of process changes and not just departmental or product changes.

Joe: Well, when I think of ISO, I mean it's an international standard. How does that reflect to me if I just do business basically domestically?

Lindsay: I think again it's just easy for an organization to say, you know, "I'm a medical device manufacturer. I want to know that suppliers I choose have got the necessary controls in place. Do I want to invent something from scratch or do I want to say what is Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems available to me?" There's an ISO 9001 standard and then it has a medical derivative, ISO13485, that's got some additional requirements that are specific to medical applications. I would rather choose that. It's there, it's consistent, and again it means that nobody has to develop these company or industry specific requirements.

Joe: Who certifies me? Who says that I'm ISO compliant?

Lindsay: Every country has an accreditation body. That's essentially the organization that is responsible for keeping this ordinance, if you want to look at it that way. So you then have a group of what we call certification bodies. These are the registration agencies, the inspectors if you want to think about it that way that will go from organization to organization and independently verify whether the company is actually meeting the ISO requirements. The accreditation body makes sure that those registration agencies have, again, the internal controls in place to make sure that they are applying the requirements consistently and are reporting on the audits consistently. So again everybody is essentially playing to the same set of rules.

Joe: Can I go wrong putting ISO in? I mean, can it somehow hurt me as a company? Is there things I should watch out for, maybe I'm not ready for it or something?

Lindsay: Yes. There's a short answer to that. I'm a consultant, would you expect me to say anything differently? Of course I'm going to say yes, you could go wrong. It's going to cost you millions of dollars. And shame on you. You should have been thinking more deeply about it.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems But if we forget that, forget that I'm a consultant and just look at the fact that I've been working with companies on the ISO-based management systems for 20 plus years, what I see over and over again is an organization that doesn't know what it doesn't know. So it's saying "OK, well we can do this in a few weeks. This is easy. Let's just document what we do and get that registration agency in and everything will be fine." In reality what we're doing is establishing two sets of operating procedures: the way we always operate, and the way we think the registration agency wants to see us operate.

It's a huge burden for that organization to bear. Every person in sales, in marketing, in purchasing, in production, production planning, human resources, inspection, shipping, all have to understand two sets of operating procedures. That's typically where I see companies go wrong. Instead of looking and saying, "What makes sense?" Because again, ISO is a standard based on good business practice.

That's revised every seven to 10 years to say again "How can we improve this thing?" So that it applies to any type of organization, whether they're service, whether they're manufacturing, whether they have five employees, whether they have 5,000 employees.

How can we improve it?

If an organization is serious about it, they're looking and saying "Let's challenge it." If we need to change because we don't adequately verify the material that is coming through our docks to make sure before we add any value to it whatsoever it meets our requirements, then why would they want to be in business?

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems If you're going to go wrong, the fact is that you won't challenge it so that you know that anything that you are wanting to change, needing to change, needing to implement is adding value and is strengthening your operating practices.

So if it's doing that the chances are it's easier for you to institutionalize it, rather than having people say "It makes no sense. I'm going to do this and then when the registrar comes in I'm going to present that I am doing my activities in a completely different way that's ISO compliant." Does that make sense?

Joe: It sounds like it's a continuous improvement process in itself and with a very well-defined standard. I think most people consider ISO, that it's just a checklist?

Lindsay: Exactly. That's probably even supported by the fact that registration agency comes in with a checklist. "We want to see that you do it this way. We want to see that you do it that way. Can you show us evidence of how you control non-conforming products or materials? How you perform corrective action when that material has been returned by the customer or that product has been returned by the customer." And yes, it feels very checklist-like. But when you boil it down you actually are looking at all of these different processes. In many cases you want to document them because that's the most consistent way for people to understand how something should be performed and most especially for new employees.

So I don't know, is it some insult to say that it's documented? Is there some insult in some cases to say that there are checklists to support how things should be performed? I don't think so.

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: That's one of the big resistances to Lean is the perception that you are standardizing all the work and making robots out of everyone. But standard work is kind of what you're saying that ISO is all about. It's making work standard. I mean, being explicit in what it is.

And that's not a bad thing because if there is a deviation from it, it would raise the flag, or in the Lean terms, someone would pull an Andon cord.

Lindsay: Exactly. You find me one new employee joining an organization that will ever complain that there is something in documented form that tells them how they should be performing something. They cry out for it. But how many times do you hear people say "Oh yeah, it's baptism by fire here." Nobody likes to be in that situation. I mean I've been through it myself; it's disconcerting. People want to be productive; they want to get up and running fast. What you tend to hear from the more seasoned people is "Oh, but it's so unique, what we do. There's no way you could possibly standardize it." Of course that's complete nonsense. There are certain things, obviously, every order is different. The flavor of what a customer wants versus the next one, absolutely.

But there are certain steps that are consistent throughout an organization and between organizations regardless of what they do. That's what you are looking to standardize. And so you're helping people further downstream in the organization, "See, this is what I should get before the sales people hand over this information, this is what should be in place. In order for me now to put this order into the system and translate it to production or manufacturing or whoever it is that's going to then deliver on the requirements.

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: Staying on this standard work thing a little bit, if I'm a Lean company and I have standard work documents... let's say that I'm going to be ISO-compliant. Should standard work documents be subject to surveillance or the audit of ISO? Lindsay: Well, if they wouldn't, wouldn't you then again be trying to run duplicate systems? How productive is that? Again, that's a huge drain, isn't it - having multiple standard work documents? Some that meet the ISO requirements some meet the requirements of the Lean Initiative. Some meet the requirements of a customer. Some meet the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley. It makes sense, as an organization looks at the way that these management systems. I always like to take ISO out of the equation and just say to the organization, "We're talking about your operating practices that naturally are impacted by financial measures and metrics that are naturally impacted by strategic objectives. Bring them in together. Do not make them discrete. Make sure that these things interrelate. It just makes it easier and more realistic to manage rather than having these multiple, dueling or competing initiatives."

Joe: You're saying that it should be just part of the practice of the company? If they establish best practices, they're more likely ISO compliant to begin with then?

Lindsay: I've never found an organization that did not meet the requirements in some shape or form. They may not meet them to the degree and usually they're the first ones to admit. "There are certain parts of our business that we are a little more informal. Those are the parts of the business where we are more...it's more thought out, it's more documented, it's more well understood and it's more consistent." Usually, once you've done an evaluation of the organization, you can actually substantiate and say that. In Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems these other areas you really are feeling some pain." People ask and this missing thing is information that has been miscommunication, it's been missing. Product therefore has been produced and delivered to the customer that doesn't meet requirements. Which then costs time and energy and having it returned. Evaluating it, what are we going to do to avoid it from happening again? Improving the credibility with the customer, all of those things, ultimately, we want to avoid happening in the first place.

Joe: Can a Lean company work hand in hand with ISO? Lindsay: Absolutely. I've seen it time and time again. The big question is which would happen first? Maybe you've got an opinion on that.

Joe: I don't know that I have an opinion of it. When I think of a Lean Initiative and we go in, we try to break down the silos a little bit. But first of all, what we try to do is create the value streams and improve a general process. But improving it, Ono would say, "No standard, no improvement." You've got to have a standard to begin with.

Lindsay: Exactly.

Joe: So if you're sitting there looking at a standard and you draw up that standard, you're going to find deficiencies within your organization right away. Then you start the improvement process. I guess, where I've always looked at ISO before is the fact that, to me, it was a checklist. To me, it was something that I needed to be compliant about. Was it a good checklist? Yes, it was an excellent checklist. There were certain areas that I could take a look at ISO and look at how we did shipping, maybe. Or look at how we are handling complaints. These would be my improvement initiatives, where I failed in the ISO Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems standard. I would think that that would be a good way to be able to achieve ISO is through using the tools of the Lean or the journey.

Lindsay: Absolutely. I've seen the two tools work phenomenally well together. Again ISO is really... and this gets back to the question that you had asked about, "Can companies go wrong?" I think lots of companies go wrong, just by underestimating what is the initiative because, essentially, it's looking at every part of the business. How can you make changes to every part of your business in a matter of weeks without it having a huge impact? You want to make sure you're doing it correctly. ISO is a wonderful tool to say, "OK. Here is the framework. We are now going to look... we're going to follow our process through."

From marketing through closing through sales to the contract being generated and the order being received, the material being purchased. Any design that might need to take place; manufacturing, shipping, delivery, invoicing. Then circling back to get feedback from the customer. Continual improvement, corrective action and then all of the support processes that take place.

That is where Lean is phenomenal. Then come in and say, "We've been evaluating ourselves against this framework, we've come up with a number of areas where we are lacking, where we do need to standardize, but where there are opportunities for improvement."

That gives Lean the platform to go in and say, "OK. Let's look at shipping. Let's look at a specific part of our design process. Let's look at a specific part of our marketing process.

Look to see how can we make this more streamlined? How can we improve this? How can Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems we add value here?" ISO makes it... again, offers the tools to then say, "OK. So now we've really changed this process. We've really improved it. What is the best way of communicating this to our people, so that they understand how it's changed, what they need to do?"

By looking cross-functionally, because obviously every process typically involves multiple functions, we understand the hand-offs and the involvement from each group of people.

The best way to do that is to document it. It kind of gets back to that fear that many organizations have that, "ISO is all about documenting."

It's the nature of the business. It's the nature of the beast. But why is that a bad thing?

Why is it a bad thing to have, in flow chart form, or to have pictures and photographs, work instructions, as they are necessary, how something should be performed? To provide the clarity and the standardization and the continuity and the consistency that people want and need.

Joe: Kind of sets the bar, doesn't it, of what you need to do?

Lindsay: It really does set the bar. How many times... maybe you've seen this too, as you've gone into organizations. You find somebody who is in the sales department or they're new in the shipping department or the engineering or R&D functions. And what are they doing? They're essentially creating their own work instructions. They're creating their own procedures, because it's what they need to understand, as a new person, how they perform something. So any organization that shies away from the need to document, the need to have things in black and white, on paper or electronically... but the fact is that Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems they are there, for people to understand. I never understand that fear and it's so prevalent.

Joe: You also mentioned which kind of intrigued me of applying ISO to sales and marketing. How is that applied there?

Lindsay: Again, it is the same thing which I always call the new standard. When I say the new standard I'm talking about the standard, the revision of the year 2000. There was a revision, actually, in 2008. But you could have blinked and missed the changes. When I say the new standard... The year 2000, the changes, the revision was so notable. Because it was such a shift in thinking and it was asking organizations to look at processes, instead of being departmentally focused, looking at the process focus. What is that input that then says, "We need to go into the transformation activity?" So at the end, we are then out-putting or producing an unfinished product, a material, data, whatever it is to then pass on to the next process. That, again, triggers it to take place.

One of the great things about the new standard was that it was really looking and teaching organizations to think about it in four stages. That what do we plan to do? Then the execution. We've now executed on our plan. We want to check. So what kind of verification activity has taken place?

To make sure what we planned to do is indeed what we actually executed on. And then, when we find that there is a mismatch, what do we do to close the loop, to correct, analyze? So this is very interesting, sorry for the long answer, when you think about sales and marketing. You can absolutely apply that same plan, do, check, act methodology. How Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems many times are we saying, "You are our customer, we want to understand what your requirements are?" We then produce the statements of work that confirms it back to them.

Maybe it's an estimate, maybe it's a proposal depending on the nature of the company's business. Than saying, "How well have we understood this?" How many of these opportunities are we actually winning? How easy is it then for the group of people that plan and produce whatever it is that we do, the product or service, to take these requirements and accurately deliver?

Then go back to the customer at the end and say, "OK. Now judge us, based on our complete cycle. Based on what we said we would do in marketing, what we sold in the sales process and then what we delivered to you in the manufacturing or the delivery process? How well did we do? How well did we set the expectations and how well did we deliver on them?"

Again, if you go into many organizations, there's this rivalry between operations and sales.

Sales is always selling something that we know we can't deliver. And then sales says, "We're the voice of the customer. Delivery never understands. We'd have no business if it was up to them." That helps to start to close the gap. Again, it's remarkable, some of those changes. Tell me you'll find for me one business owner or leader of an organization that isn't concerned about sales, doesn’t want to grow business. So it's within their interest to tie all of this together.

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: You're saying that there should be a standard in your sales or marketing that you should be following. Sales and marketing must be utilizing those improvement methods out there to be able to use. And ISO may be leading in that field.

Lindsay: Absolutely. Is sales and marketing not cyclical just like everything else? Does it not have a trigger? Does it not have set activities that need to take place, with a distinct deliverable? The answer is, absolutely. It's just like any other process. We want to help the people who are contributing, who are primary users of that process, or contributors to that process, to understand. These are the tools that are available to you. This is the expectation of what you will be doing for this organization. This is the expectation of what your deliverables will be. To set up every process that leads from here successfully. You could look at it and say, "Marketing is the first process. Sales is the second one." Then from there, you've got the order receiving and the all the way through manufacturing, shipping, delivery. Why wouldn't you want to look at, essentially, the foundations of the organization? And say, "How connected are we? Or how confident are we? How strong these are?" Before, we start to make changes to other subsequent processes.

Joe: I think that's very true but I think people in the sales and marketing have stayed away from most quality initiatives. I think...

Lindsay: They have, they have. You know what they say, they say they love it; they want it as long as it doesn't affect them. You can see it time and time again. Why do they love it and why do they want it? They love it and want it because it's something else they can sell to the customer, right. "Wow, look at this, we're ISO. Wow, look at this, we're Lean or Six Sigma, we're this, we're that. I don't personally have to do anything. It doesn't affect me Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems personally as a salesperson, but look what my organization does." So it's always interesting when you say "Oh no, you too will be impacted by this." Eventually they start to see "Yes, it's great." When does anyone complain when they have more tools in their toolkit? Ever?

Joe: No, I don't think so. I think the biggest complaint probably is when and how to use the tools.

Lindsay: Exactly.

Joe: It seems like is such a basic process and I'll say checklist driven, which may be a bad interpretation of it. But every ISO book I ever opened up eventually got to a checklist.

Lindsay: Well, you know, and I love to where this is leading to because it's exactly right.

How many organizations... they now serve multiple industries. So they may serve a very informal entrepreneurial business. They may serve a very regulated medical or pharmaceutical industry. So what does that mean to them? Does that mean that every, you know, let's take sales, since we've been talking about sales. Does that mean that the sales person has to look and say "Every opportunity has to be documented and we have to respond to it with the same complexity that we would do if it was a medical opportunity?"

Absolutely not, the name of the game is building in that flexibility. Not every customer wants to pay for a Cadillac. But the customer that does and values that, then obviously it presents a higher degree of risk, financial risk, quality risk.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems So it makes sense that that's where the complexity of the process really kicks in. We challenge companies all the time to say "OK, let's build it." As long as everybody understands the criteria then that gives them the flexibility to respond to the high risk, the medium risk and the low risk contracts, customers, opportunities.

Joe: One of the things that happen in ISO that's always confusing to me is that there are so many designations behind ISO, ISO 9000, ISO 2000, ISO this and that. And it's confusing. Is it really all that confusing, or is it just that there are certain labels and certain...?

Lindsay: I think they could have made it easier. I certainly don't think that they've made it as easy as they could have done. I mean what it boils down to is that back in the old version, 1997 version, 1994, sorry, version, you had ISO 9001, ISO 9002, and ISO 9003.

Essentially ISO 9001 was for organizations that designed as well as manufactured or produced their product or service, whereas 9002 was for organizations that had no design responsibility. ISO 9003 was for organizations that only had inspection. So a lab would be a perfect example of that.

The 2000 version came around and they decided do we really need to make it this complicated? Let's just have one standard and then organizations can exclude the disciplines that they don't have. If they're not design responsible, they'll be ISO 9001 registered and they will just exclude that and say "We're not design responsible. So we don't design, we don't expect to see it. We don't even have a design group."

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Again, if you were just a lab, then you would exclude the product realization process because you're not producing a product or a service. So they tried to make it a little more straightforward there.

I think where people still tend to get a little confused is that it's still ISO 9000 and 9004 and 9001 and they are essentially just the guidance documents for helping companies interpret them. But ISO 9001 is the only standard that an organization can get registered to. And I'm not talking about the industry specific standards.

I'm talking about, you know, you've got things like ISO 13485, which is specifically for medical companies. So essentially it takes ISO 9001 and has some modifications that are specific to what the medical community would like to see.

Then AS 9100 is kind of the same thing but for aerospace but essentially what they are doing is they're taking that one standard, ISO 9001 is essentially the foundation for these industry specific requirements. I'm sure I've made that very clear now, right?

Joe: The other thing that you talked about and I thought was really unique in a question you sent me was a centralized or decentralized system ownership. Can you explain the difference to me there and touch upon that?

Lindsay: The standard requires that an organization have a nominated management representative. What that means is that there is someone in the organization who is responsible essentially for coordinating this ISO 9000 initiative. And that they are responsible for reporting on the quality management system, reporting back to management and they have management's authority. Then typically this is the person who Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems would deal with the third party with the registration audits and that type of thing. But what you see very often is that as an organization is thinking about implementing a formalized quality management system like ISO, they say "Who will do this for us? Who are we going to pick? How are we going to approach this?"

So they will; nominate this individual, call them their ISO 9000 management representative and then say "OK, this is your baby. You now need to make sure that you get us compliant so that we will pass a registration audit." This person says "OK, what does that mean?" "Well, you know, we need to document what we do so you'll need to do that.

So you need to get with everybody and write all our procedures and our work instructions."

This person says "Well how much time is this going to take? You know I'm the quality manager" or I don't know, "I'm the project manager," or whatever I might be. I might be engineering manager. Who knows what my function is? But how much time do I have to do this? "Well how much time do you think it will take?" "Well this sounds like a full time job."

"OK, well maybe we can get you some help" or maybe we just expect you to do it. But the fact is that now this person is dedicated to this initiative. They become kind of like a centralized function. The downside of that is it lacks ownership. If you head up sales and then you have got someone who heads up engineering and you have somebody who heads up manufacturing, shipping, R and D, purchasing. You've nothing to lose.

Somebody else is coming in and documenting the processes and is taking responsibility for this initiative. Why would you ever tell this person when something has changed? You know, maybe not maliciously, but you forget in the heat of battle. There are lots going on.

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems You're just not as diligent about telling this person "OK, we've made a change here. We've changed routines. Maybe we have a new system for generating purchase orders." Or maybe we've changed our criteria for evaluating critical vendors and it never filters back to this person who sometimes it can seem is back in their ivory tower trying to manage all of this program.

What we tend to see is a more effective model is saying "OK, yeah, you have to have a management representative but this person is really only coordinating. So they're the person who will pull data together to present to management at the time of a management review." When it comes to actually documenting processes, looking at processes to see how they could be optimized, it is much better if that falls to the person who has the greatest influence on that particular process, which tends to be departmental leaders.

They are the ones who can then work with their peers to say "OK, we have a design process. Let's get a representative from purchasing in here. Let's get a representative from manufacturing. But as head of engineering this is my process and I'm going to take responsibility for making sure it reflects the way we want to do things. I'm not going to push it off to this management representative to write this on my behalf and never feel truly bought-in to it." Does that make sense?

Joe: Yes, yes. That's a tough thing for any quality department, of how you actually manage quality within the organization.

Lindsay: You know, to me it's not about passing or failing because again it is a system that has been successfully implemented. Getting actually registered or getting certified is a Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems formality. I mean you would expect too. Why wouldn't you? The fact is if you've done it properly you've been committed to it, everybody has been involved, you're truly living and breathing it, you're really don't need a third party to come in and tell you that. You know it yourselves. Have one individual where it rises or falls totally on them just seems completely unrealistic versus saying "Hey, you know, there's a group of 15 or 20 people who have been integral in analyzing what we do, addressing it and documenting our activities and implementing these improvements.

For some reason we were to fail it wouldn't be down to one individual. This is a group effort. We want these people to feel this is how we influence our organization. This is how I communicate to other people and the people that are involved in my process, how it should be performed and make sure that the buy-in is there." And make sure as new people join the organization that they understand the process, too.

Joe: When we talk about implementing ISO, can I just go download some manuals and go through my checklists and implement it?

Lindsay: You can, absolutely. If you want a quality council and you want to suddenly think "OK, who would be on our quality council?" Basically have all of the terminology that has been taken out of another organization put into these stock or standard procedures and try and somehow manipulate them to reflect what you do, be my guest. Many organizations, I think, try to do that. Of course, the downside is no organization is the same as the next and the way they... you know, who the customers are, the processes, the sophistication of the processes, the sophistication of the infrastructure that the organization has. All of that is different and it influences that.

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems So by the time you try to manipulate something from another organization, it probably would have been easier to have said "Let's start afresh with our own organization." And not try and take a quality manual from ABC Manufacture in Arkansas.

Joe: You think it's beneficial to have an ISO external consultant to assist in your organization to start? Or hire one, let's say.

Lindsay: Well, I think it's like any major initiative. The fact is that do you as an organization, you have to ask yourself, do we have the know-how internally and do we have the resources internally? Do we have the discipline internally? Do we have the discipline to prioritize for the next 12 months to get this thing done?" Then this is where an organization says, "Or, do we want someone to come in?" Who's done this over and over again we don't have that learning curve. We got someone who will come in and tell us, explicitly, "OK, this is where you are. This is where your opportunities are. These are the minimum requirements that you have to meet. This is some of your low hanging fruit that you could pull into the program as you go along. This is how long it's going to take you.'"

These are the people I think, that we think, need to be brought into the program. These are your departmental leads. These are the other people that, during the course of an evaluation audit, make themselves apparent as being the movers and shakers. The people who will be great in contributing and driving this process.

Then it becomes a knowledge transfer, so at the end of the process...when I say the process I mean the end of the ISO initiative...what is the end? I suppose it's when the processes have been documented, the improvements have been built-in to this Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems documented system and then they have been implemented and then verified through internal audits. That people are actually working to them. That's what I'm talking about as the end.

When the company has then sought that knowledge of saying, "Yes, we're comfortable that we are now conforming with the requirements and we can take the next step to get ready, depending on what we want to do." But by that time, we know that the company is self-sufficient. We've had this drip feed change management and knowledge transfer. With these internal organization teams who have been involved in documenting and implementing.

Joe: Where is the future of ISO going? Is it alive and well? It seems kind of old hat to me.

Lindsay: It's amazing me and I've been doing this for 20 years. If you had told me 15 years ago or maybe even 10 years ago, that companies will still call up and say, "We're thinking of implement ISO, can you come and talk to us about it?" I would have said, "By 2011, everybody will have heard about it. There will be no on that will be asking that question." Yet, maybe not every day, but multiple times a week, someone is making that very call, asking that very question. Why? Either the company didn't exist 10 years ago. It didn't have the kind of customers or it wasn't producing the kind of products where customers would start to talk to them about... ...Have more formal quality management systems, higher expectations. More work they wanted to push in their direction. So they never needed to know about it. Yes, it's alive

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems and kicking. I can see it continue to be. I can't say it going away. Because what would it be replaced by?

You hear lots of rhetoric about it's going to go away and something else is going to come on. But that's going to take such a concerted effort, when you think about just, "Who's been involved, how long it's taken to get it to this point. How many organizations are registered to it?" Just the adoption, it would be an unbelievable undertaking to dismantle that and replace it with something else.

Joe: So you believe that, in the future, it's only going to really grow. I see very little in the marketplace about ISO. It seems like it's a thing that, once you grow up as a company, you do. Maybe more manufactures than service. Which I think is a misnomer. Because I think it's very prevalent in healthcare and very prevalent in other service firms now. But I don't see it in the marketplace as much as what I see the other quality methodologies. Is it just an accepted fact that you become ISO after a certain size?

Lindsay: You said it. The larger organizations... I don't think there are many large organizations that aren't registered. Somehow, we were completely unaware of these standards. It's just come to our attention 20 plus years. There's none of those. The Baxters of this world and the Fords and the GM and all the rest have been there, done that. I think that fraternity is asking themselves, "How do we get more out of it? We've used that as the baseline. Now how do we optimize?" This is, of course, where I believe the Six Sigma comes into play for the smaller organizations. They haven't. So they're now growing and they're starting to do business with these larger organizations. They need to get that baseline. ISO is offering them that opportunity. As they do grow and they become the mid Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems and larger organizations, they are then in that same position. Saying, "Now, how do we optimize it?" I think that's why you see a lot more of that in publications because that's where the demand is.

Even when you read the blogs of the VPs of quality of any of the Fortune 1000, that's really the emphasis, how do we do better? How do we raise the bar? What methodologies are out there for us? We've got a quality management system. Now how do we use it to bring some of these techniques and these techniques optimize it?

Joe: So ISO is really a standard that's accepted within industry. It's just as much a part of industry now and what they do in business as it is something that I'm going to do a cultural change or transformation to achieve. We're looking to improve it and we use it as a baseline for best practices and things. But it's not really anything new to us. It's a part of the way we do business.

Lindsay: Exactly. Unless there'd be a significant change, like the '94 to the 2000, that would cause a flurry of publicity and papers being presented. And drive all of this activity of, "OK. How do we approach it? What are the good ways and the bad ways?" That need for all of that information to be out there. The downside is the most recent change was negligible. That's not because the opportunities aren't there. I think they are absolutely. I think there's probably quite a lot of fighting right now about what the new revision should look like.

How are we going to put more improvements in there? Should we be looking at a different model of assessment? So people don't know when the auditors are coming in? And looking Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems at the different improvement models to try and put some kind of hybrid together. But this vast machine that represents these technical committees, it's hard to get them all in agreement. Because they're obviously looking for input now, from every country that has the bodies in place and the technical committees in place.

That's where they get all the suggestions for changes from. Then, they are digested and evaluated for merit, made into a draft and then ultimately into the new standard. I would like to hope that next time there will be some more significance.

Joe: Where does MOCG play a role and where are they going in the future? What's their direction?

Lindsay: We firmly support all of the standards. Support ISO-9000, all its industry derivatives. We also support the environmental standard, ISO-14000. As well as the health and safety standard, 18001. So that certainly isn't going away. We'll continue to consult and help clients. And offer the training that they need, too. We work a lot with the small to mid-size companies, who are still saying, "We don't know anything about it. Come help us understand the requirements. Decide whether we want to get registered, use them as a framework. We're getting to that stage now where the owner or the leader of the organization cannot get his or her arms around everything."

They need to be able to start to let go and they need to be able to have defined ways of doing it. So that they have the confidence that the quality will be there and this body of knowledge is never going to walk out the door because they depend on one person and

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems one department. So that need will continue and we will continue to service that need. If new opportunities present themselves, certainly we'll be developing those.

Joe: Where would you send someone to learn about ISO, as a new initiative?

Lindsay: There are still organizations out there where it's a sell. It's a hard sell. Maybe it's the quality manager that says, "We need to do it. I know a little bit. I know enough to be dangerous. But I want to sell internally." I would say that one person should go out and get themselves in an ISO-9000 public course. Then they can have two days understanding the requirements and how they would apply those requirements in their own environment.

Now, when that person is then successful, they go back. They start to talk to the owner of the organization and say, "This is something that I think we should do and these are the opportunities. Someone from sales has already talked to me about a couple of customers that have been murmuring about wanting us to do this. How about I bring someone in and they can talk to the management group about it?"

Then this is where we would probably come in and do a presentation to the entire management team or some general awareness training. So they can understand, what is it and what is it not? As we've talked about over the last few minutes, there are a lot of misnomers out there and lots of things that need to be clarified to take the fear away.

And again, help an organization decide, "What do we have the appetite for here? Do we have the appetite for a deep initiative that's going to be far-reaching, that's going to have lasting improvements? Or do we have the appetite here to just try, as cheaply ad as quickly as possible, to get that certificate on the wall by any means possible?" That means Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems getting an ISO program that's got a canned quality manual and a canned procedure. Then we'll do that. The organization has to ask themselves, "What is it that we want out of this?"

Again, the owner of the company has to say, "It's interesting. The quality manager's saying we should do ISO. I've got the VP of Operations saying we should do a Lean Initiative. I wonder if we can bring all of these things together." That's where we'd say, "Absolutely.

You would be crazy not to, if you keep those two initiatives separate. Then you're not capitalizing on all of these opportunities and using a single program to pull them all together."

Joe: You believe that ISO has to be tied to business metrics to make it sustainable and to make it workable?

Lindsay: How else will you know how valuable it has been? How will you be able to judge it, as an organization? And say, "Wow. It was a resource strain. It took us a lot of time and it was quite painful." But how will you know where you were before, in order to say 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, five years later, how have we changed? How have we grown? How have we improved? What was its value, long term? That can only be done by building in the metrics, so you can see the before and after.

Joe: I would like to thank you very much for your time, Lindsay. This podcast will be available in the Business 901 iTunes Store and the Business 901 blog site. Thanks again.

Lindsay: Thank you, Joe.

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

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Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joseph T. Dager Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Ph: 260-438-0411 Fax: 260-818-2022 Email: jtdager@business901.com Web/Blog: http://www.business901.com Twitter: @business901 What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe's ability to combine his expertise with "out of the box" thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with." James R. Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive company providing direction in areas such as Lean Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Launches and Re-Launches. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Business901 provides and implements marketing, project and performance planning methodologies in small businesses. The simplicity of a single flexible model will create clarity for your staff and as a result better execution. My goal is to allow you spend your time on the need versus the plan.

An example of how we may work: Business901 could start with a consulting style utilizing an individual from your organization or a virtual assistance that is well versed in our principles. We have capabilities to plug virtually any marketing function into your process immediately. As proficiencies develop, Business901 moves into a coach’s role supporting the process as needed. The goal of implementing a system is that the processes will become a habit and not an event.

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